Screws editors caught in a right royal twist

If you don't like trial by newspaper, don't try newspapermen in print rather than in court. So enter all the prudent caveats that the royal editor (not to mention the real editor) of the News of the World could wish. But don't, equally, underestimate the gravity of what's at stake here.

This isn't at all the kind of insouciant matter that old tabloid hands, chatting on Radio 4 about their glory days, would have you believe. Want a telephone security number? Need a quick trawl round Palace answering machines? Just put your money on some third-party table and tune in.

Well, we'll see. And if we see the worst happen for the News of the World, at least there won't be the usual cry for more law to meet more fast and loose behaviour at the bottom end of Fleet Street - because there is already lots of legislation here. It's just a case of using it, as the Information Commissioner now proactively intends.

But at this point two rather more complex challenges arise. One is for public understanding. The other is for the Press Complaints Commission and, beyond it, for the whole of the press.

It takes understanding to apply 'public interest' tests to the investigation of crime, corruption and deception (which the PCC allows as an exceptional defence in cases of bugging and unauthorised surveillance). Occasionally, all newspapers that turn over stones will need to do exceptional things and need that freedom if they are to be effective watchdogs. But such investigations can't be a generalised trawl for titbits, a covert sweep in search of something or other, even if only a Palace gossip paragraph. Condone that and the kind of seamy wheezes alleged here will poison the well for all journalism.

That would be a lousy outcome. And so it will be if the Press Complaints Commission emerges from all this looking bedraggled and out of touch. Obviously recognising that danger, it's been fast off the condemnatory mark. Some of its most powerful founding figures - Rupert Murdoch, his London lieutenant Les Hinton, and Paul Dacre of the Mail - are surely as cheesed off with the News of the World as anyone.

Then there's the question of sanctions. The PCC is sometimes reckoned to lack teeth, but not in matters of gross misconduct. Then respect for its code, written into individual contracts of employment, can turn into swift sackings. It hasn't happened much so far, but the current array of charges has a gross feel about it. If I were royal - or real - at the Screws, I'd be feeling very vulnerable indeed.